"Witold Pilecki. Confronting the Legend of the "Volunteer to Auschwitz""
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Ewa Cuber-Strutyńska Witold Pilecki. Confronting the legend of the “volunteer to Auschwitz” Death had many opportunities to prematurely end the life of Witold Pilecki, who participated in the ight for independence during the war against the Bolsheviks and fought in World War II. Despite the risk he took, he managed to avoid death when he was at the front, when he found himself in the Auschwitz concentration camp and when he took part in the Warsaw Uprising. That it reached him in seemingly independent Poland and that it happened owing to, among others, his old brothers in arms should be considered a tragic paradox. Pilecki became a victim of the Communist regime, which brought death to him twice. The irst death, with a bullet in the back of his head, came on 25 May 1948; the second, symbolic one, involved killing the memory of Pilecki by censoring it for several dozen years. The memory of Pilecki was liberated and he was rehabilitated only after the fall of the regime that had brought death upon him. In the 1990s, we witnessed the publication of the irst biographies of Pilecki, which led to his return to the history of Poland and placed him in the pantheon of Poles who served their homeland to the greatest extent. Moreover, the past several years have shown a growing interest in Pilecki. His igure is now popularised by not only academic publications (which after all reach a rather small audience) but also various kinds of activities undertaken by state institutions, non-governmental organisations as well as football club fans.1 Among the increasing number of initiatives intended to honour Pilecki was even the idea to make an attempt at his beatiication.2 1 During a match between Śląsk Wrocław and Jagiellonia Białystok that took place on 3 May 2012, the supporters of Śląsk Wrocław prepared a setting including Pilecki’s portrait with a caption “Volunteer to Auschwitz” and the quote “Because compared with them Auschwitz was just a trile”. In 2013, on the 65th anniversary of Pilecki’s death, the supporters of Zawisza Bydgoszcz and Widzew Łódź created a similar setting for their clubs’ matches, and Legia Warszawa fans organised a rally to commemorate the captain. This way, the igure of Pilecki united the divided supporters’ community, and the captain himself became their idol. 2 The promoter of the idea and author of letters addressed to Pope Benedict XVI (in 2008) and to Pope Francis (in 2013) with a request to consider Witold Pilecki’s beatiication is Michał 282 From research workshops When accompanied by political or ideological disputes, sometimes the intensiication of activities intended to commemorate Pilecki rebounds on broadly understood Polish historical memory. Regardless of the disputes themselves, the consensus over the fact that Pilecki was a national hero is often the only common denominator that unites all political fractions. In collective consciousness, Witold Pilecki is present mainly as a “volunteer to Auschwitz” and the “author of the irst report about the Holocaust”. The deinitions were introduced by authors of the irst publications on the captain. As they were reproduced and at the same time preserved in subsequent biographies of Pilecki, they have started functioning as synonyms for his name and become an inseparable part of the heroic legend of Pilecki, which contains also traces of idealisation and simpliication. How should those two popular expressions be thus treated? I shall try to ind an answer to the question by taking a look at the biography of Pilecki in the context of the expressions. Witold Pilecki, who later became the most famous Captain of the Polish Cavalry, was born on 13 May 1901 in Olonets, North-West Russia, to which his ancestors were deported from the territory of Lithuania as repression for participating in the January Uprising. Witold was one of ive children of Julian Pilecki, a forest inspector, and Ludwika Osiecimska. In order to start his education in a Polish school, he and his mother and siblings moved to Vilna in 1910, while his father stayed in Olonets for inancial reasons.3 It was in Vilna that he came across secret organisations for the irst time when he joined a scout organisation prohibited by the tsar and the secret ‘Sokół’ Association. By the time World War I broke out, he had completed three grades at the junior high school in Vilna and started his holidays in Druskininkai. During the war, he continued his education in Orel upon the River Oka, where he founded the irst scout patrol in that area. In October 1918, Pilecki became a student of the Joachim Lelewel Junior High School in Vilna and joined the secret Polish Military Organisation (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, POW). The atmosphere in Vilna in the period that was crucial for the city and for Poles urged Pilecki to join the Vilna Self-Defence (Samoobrona Wileńska), a part of the Polish Army. Later – as a cavalryman – he fought for example in the Battle of Grodno and the Battle of Warsaw and defended Vilna. When the war with the Bolsheviks had ended, he passed his school-leaving examination and continued his military service, due to which he was promoted to reserve second lieutenant in 1926, with seniority from 1923. He settled on his family estate in Sukurcze near Lida (today’s Belarus), dowered by his great-grandmother, Maria née Tyrpa, Chairman of Paradis Judaeorum Foundation in Kraków. It is an element of a large-scale project entitled “Let’s Reminisce about Witold Pilecki” (Przypomnijmy o Pileckim) carried out since 2008. 3 Wiesław Jan Wysocki, Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki 1901–1948 (Warsaw: Światowy Związek Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej i Oicyna Wydawnicza Rytm, 2009), pp. 12–14. Ewa Cuber-Strutyńska, Witold Pilecki. Confronting the legend… 283 Domcyk.4 In 1931, he married Maria Ostrowska. One year later, Pilecki celebrated the birth of his irstborn son Andrzej and in 1933 – of his daughter Zoia. He remained active in the military and social sphere. He initiated the establishment of the ‘Krakus’ Military Horsemen Training (Konne Przysposobienie Wojskowe ‘Krakus’), composed of military settlers in the Lida County, after which he was appointed the Commander of the 1st Lida Military Training Squadron, placed under the command of the 19th Infantry Division in 1937. As a founder of a farmers’ association and chairman of a dairy he established himself, Pilecki was active also in his local community. In 1938, he received the Silver Cross of Merit for his diverse activities. During the Polish-German War of 1939, Pilecki as a reserve second lieutenant fought with the 19th Infantry Division of the Prusy Army and then with the 41st Reserve Infantry Division, in which he met Major Jan Włodarkiewicz, the division cavalry commander, and became his second in command.5 On September 22, when the 41st Division had been defeated, Pilecki and Major Włodarkiewicz did not follow the order of Commander-in-Chief General Edward Śmigły-Rydz and did not retreat across Romania and Hungary to France. They both stayed in Poland and became active in the underground. In order to organise recruitment to the newly created military organisation, a meeting of underground activists who declared their readiness for cooperation to Major Włodarkiewicz took place on 9 November 1939. On that day, gathered in the lat of Pilecki’s sister-in-law in Warsaw, the participants of the meeting: Major Włodarkiewicz, Second Lieutenant Pilecki, Second Lieutenant Jerzy Maringe, engineer Jerzy Skoczyński and the brothers Jan and Stanisław Dangel decided to form the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP).6 Major Włodarkiewicz, who became its commander, meant TAP as a military organisation with a clear social and ideological character based on Christian values. The organisation was thus composed mainly of students and regular soldiers coming from Christian 4 Ibidem, p. 26. 5 Marco Patricelli, Ochotnik. O rotmistrzu Witoldzie Pileckim, trans. Krzysztof Żaboklicki (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2011), pp. 69–70. 6 TAP pledged loyalty to the Polish government in exile, but did not accept General Mi- chał Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz (a Mason and theosopher) as a representative of that govern- ment. For that reason, the founders of TAP did not join Service for Poland’s Victory (Służba Zwycięstwu Polski), the irst resistance organisation in occupied Poland. TAP belonged to the Central Committee of Independence Organisations (Centralny Komitet Organizacji Niepod- ległościowych), to the Coordinating Committee of Independence Organisations (Komitet Po- rozumiewawczy Organizacji Niepodległościowych), and – when the latter was dissolved – to the Confederation of the Nation (Konfederacja Narodu, KN), which gathered a part of those resistance organisations that did not submit to the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ). The Military Confederation led by Major Włodarkiewicz was created out of KN. As a result of an integration process undertaken by KN in September 1941, TAP members became members of ZWZ. Major Włodarkiewicz became the irst Commander of ‘Wachlarz’, a sabotage organisation formed at ZWZ. 284 From research workshops circles who possessed moral and professional qualiications deined by TAP regulations.7 TAP was supposed to gather intelligence and conduct sabotage as well as social and ideological activities in accordance with such objectives as: 1) Continuing the ight for independence until the inal victory by all available means. 2) Developing a program for the Republic that would ensure its moral, political, economic and cultural revival. 3) Providing moral support to society during the occupation and preparing it for the problems that lie ahead.8 As part of the intelligence and sabotage activities, TAP members gathered information about the movements of enemy troops and of industrial production for the German army, prepared iles on people suspected of collaboration and on Volksdeutsche and collected information about the repressive measures used by the occupier.